Housewife's Love Song
by Sintari
Summary: Uzumaki Hinata lives another day in another life. Hinata, Naruto, Neji: what is and what might have been.


_Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of the lives I'm not living. – Jonathan Safron Foer_

Uzumaki Hinata has always been one of the earliest risers in the village, but when she wakes she is most often alone. She no longer checks the Hokage's side of the bed to see if it's still warm.

Regardless, two small lives depend on her for breakfast. She pauses before waking each of them. Boruto sleeps sprawled on his stomach like a starfish. Himawari sleeps curled into a ball. On her daughter's bedside table are broken crayons and a new drawing of Naruto. Hinata will add it to the others on the refrigerator.

At the academy, she entrust her firstborn to the care of her former teammate, Shino. They pass a few pleasantries, and she wonders again why he never married. Then wonders again how she became an old woman at 33, trying to fit every odd puzzle piece into marital harmony. Wonders if such a thing exists.

Most days Hinata is thankful that Himawari is still home underfoot. Cleaning spills, admiring drawings, instructing how many times to stir – these small actions build atop one another until another day and night finds a way to pass.

Hinata's next stop is the market. Between the stalls, she catches a glimpse of the haunted face of a woman who got everything she ever wanted. Uzumaki Hinata and Uchiha Sakura lock eyes and then look away. Hinata is suddenly thankful for Himawari's penchant for skipping ahead, for the excuse to chase her daughter instead of stopping and making small talk in the spaces around all the things better left unsaid.

Their next stop is the Hyuga compound. She has formed the habit of taking afternoon tea with her mother, Hyuga Himiko, and her sister Hanabi while her father and daughter practice elementary Byukagan exercises disguised as games of make believe.

Until Himawari, Hinata had forgotten what the sparkle of pride in her father's eyes looked like.

"There's the youngest to awaken her Byukagan in my lifetime," Hiashi always says upon greeting his granddaughter.

"Second youngest," Hinata doesn't say. Tries not to think. Because what kind of mother puts cold truth above her only daughter's accomplishments?

"You look tired," her mother says, where only Hinata can hear. "This will help." She palms a sachet of one of her special teas to Hinata, who quickly pockets it. She recognizes the familiar smell of leaves, the mixture her mother calls "Housewife's Love Song," that when allowed to steep for just long enough will dull the sharp edges of a long day of homemaking.

If she activated her Byukagan she could see Neji's grave from here.

"He gave his life to protect you and Naruto," her father had said, the day they covered the perfect Hyuga's body with black Konoha dirt. He'd meant it to be comforting.

Hinata thinks back to the first time her husband sent a shadow clone to observe Boruto's shuriken competition. "He made a bad trade," she thinks.

Hyuga never changes.

When the mantle of Hokage sat new on Naruto's shoulders he would send word when he would not be home for dinner. They would plan together how Hinata would cope when he would have to go for days at a time on what he always called "diplomatic missions." These days Hinata does not tell the children that their father will be home for dinner until she sees his chakra points darkening their door.

After story time and kissing two sets of soft eyelids to sleep, she brushes her hair, 100 strokes, and looks in the mirror at the haunted face of a woman who got everything she ever wanted.

Housewife's Love Song can never steep long enough to sooth the bleeding edges of her memory.

 _Her cousin Neji. A constant presence by her side. But who appreciates "constant" when you're 17 and in love with the wrong boy and there's a war on?_

 _"Hinata-sama," he had said. And she'd been so astonished at the tenderness she saw written in silver in his eyes that she'd taken a step back. That was how Hyuga Hinata, a 17-year-old who had never been kissed, knew_ something _was going to happen now._

 _But he'd only brushed the backs of two fingers against her cheek, opening his mouth to speak, before the attack began and the world ended. It was the only time he ever touched her in love until one hundred and nineteen minutes later when she felt the weight of him against her back, then felt it fall away._

From girlhood she has been trained to say a nightly prayer to the kami at their home altar. Every night her prayers grow smaller and smaller. She prays that the Branch House never existed, that the Juubi never attacked, that her children knew their father. She prays that that last stolen moment with her cousin could have lasted a single minute longer. Thirty seconds. Ten.

Maybe things will be different someday, the housewife thinks. But it doesn't take Byukagan to see her future days stretching out in front of her like a string of thousand paper dolls.

If she holds very still and silent she can still feel the backs of her cousin's two fingers ghost down her cheek. Maybe he was going to tell her the secret to their family's jutsu. Maybe he was going to ask her to take his hand and run. Maybe she misremembers. Maybe she made it all up.

Maybe two Hyuga could have been happy.

Maybe in another life.


End file.
